Forestry plan panned by biodiversity expert

By Claire Miller, Environment Reporter, The Age (article), 20/5/99

Large tracts of Australia's native forests could be dedicated to intensive commercial wood production under a scheme being promoted by the timber industry and government at a workshop in Orbost this week. The scheme, criticised by biodiversity experts as the last straw for flora and fauna conservation, involves setting aside selected regrowth forests for intensive, plantation-style management to generate more wood more quickly for sawn timber and woodchip markets. Plantation-style management means selectively thinning trees to promote growth In the remaining trees as potential quality sawlogs.

The steering committee for the workshop includes the Japanese woodchip giant HarrisDaishowa, the CSIRO forestry division and representatives from state forestry departments.

The federal Forestry and Conservation Minister, Mr Wilson Tuckey, said that intensive management would not be largescale or contiguous, and the environmental values would be protected through state codes of forest practice and monitoring, The senior CSIRO experimen tal forestry scientist organising the workshop, Mr Mike Connell, said the plantation-style management was necessary to make up for timber locked away in national parks and conservation reserves under the regional forest agreements between the states and the Commonwealth.

But the head of the National Biodiversity Council, Professor Harry Recher, said vulnerable plants and animals were already becoming increasingly isolated in fragmented: habitat reserves. Localised extinctions were being recorded, and the trend would accelerate under current forestry practices.